Would scripted army spawns fix the long-standing issue Rome II and DeI have with the impotence of large empires?

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

Inspired by the necroing of that thread about how weak the Seleucid Empire was, because in my game I experience the exact same issue with both Seleucids and Ptolemies. Always. One of the great things about fighting Rome is when you take their settlements, it's like kicking a a hornets' nest. You have to fight like hell to put them down, as one should.

I am not proposing the same thing for large AI empires, but what about this:

What if, say, every 15 turns a script went into effect for large states over a certain city threshold? An army drawn from a select group of normal units, a couple of elites and four archers/four cavalry units could appear in the state's home region. For Seleucids and Ptolemies we could term the event "Kleruchoi Levies Arrive", or for Eastern empires (if they arise) "The Great Noble Clans Gather". It would mean the great states wouldn't be so ahistorically impotent, and it would certainly decrease the constant incentive to abandon any DeI campaign once you've exterminated all the one province minors, who are the only factions to actually fight you when you invade.

Is this possible? Would it be feasible? The scripted campaign yall did for Alexander is god-tier and the Persian Empire fights hard in it. Could something like that work? I honestly think if this issue was fixed DeI would be truly perfect, rather than merely almost perfect (lol).

[alhoon]

I don't have DEI, but for Rome 2 in general, I frankly think the best course of action is to reduce the size of the big empires to 1-2 provinces with the rest as vassals, and the vassals paying a lot of cash to their liege + a little tech bonus + a bigger recruitment pools \ replenishment etc.

[Aureliae]

With every Total War game I play, I'm simply shocked and awed by how bad of an AI Creative Assembly has managed to make, and that's further magnified by the fact that it's not as deeply moddable as it should (both CAI and BAI); I saw Dresden saying that once factions become so large, they suffer from decision deadlock and become static...it's just so ludicrous.

Your scripting idea doesn't sound too bad, but I don't know enough about scripting in R2 modding to be able to comment much further...although I can see that becoming a challenging solution if you want the spawning armies to adjust their composition along with the scripted military reforms. There are also non-AI modding workarounds, like extra economic bonuses for specific factions or something akin to ye olde Mitch's Garunteed Major Factions mod. I would also recommend the Age of Hellenism submod to help remedy major Hellenic powers of the time being boneheaded pushovers.

[Dresden]

We have a lot of things similar to Mitch's major factions mod already in DeI. The problem isn't giving them bonuses, in fact there is some evidence to support that when an empire gets too large and has too much wealth/bonuses, that is what causes the AI problem.

A script that spawns armies could be one solution, but it would have to be a bit more elegant than the ones that exist for Rome/Carthage to work for any AI faction. The problem exists in the game itself as we discovered working on Alexander. When we first made that scenario, we had Persia as a much larger empire and they did next to nothing. Later, we made them much smaller with vassals and they were much more active as can be experienced in the submod today. I am not convinced that just throwing armies at the AI would solve the issue, unfortunately. It seems there is almost a switch that makes it so they go dormant at some point, even with armies.

[Jake Armitage]

I think the same as Dresden, meaning that an elegant scripted method can at least lower the possibility to have/limit weird situations.
It isn't extremly hard to do but it surely requires some tests and trials while building the script.
It is inside myl things to do, speaking personally.

[Aureliae]

...there is some evidence to support that when an empire gets too large and has too much wealth/bonuses, that is what causes the AI problem.

...It seems there is almost a switch that makes it so they go dormant at some point, even with armies.

Does the DeI team have any deeper idea about the source of this or how it works mechanically? Is it that the AI has too many decisions to make or does it have too many variables to plug into its decision making? Or is it still totally unknown why and how it happens?

I know Seleukos lowered the values which AI factions are willing to travel to go after a strategic objective or aid their allies in the Age of Hellenism submod, because Seleukos' tests saw the AI would more effectively make strategic decisions when they were only concerned with the land they control and the immediately surrounding area.

...Could it be that this was intentionally put into the engine as like...a cheap, quick, and dirty solution to keep large AI empires from being too powerful?

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

We have a lot of things similar to Mitch's major factions mod already in DeI. The problem isn't giving them bonuses, in fact there is some evidence to support that when an empire gets too large and has too much wealth/bonuses, that is what causes the AI problem.

A script that spawns armies could be one solution, but it would have to be a bit more elegant than the ones that exist for Rome/Carthage to work for any AI faction. The problem exists in the game itself as we discovered working on Alexander. When we first made that scenario, we had Persia as a much larger empire and they did next to nothing. Later, we made them much smaller with vassals and they were much more active as can be experienced in the submod today. I am not convinced that just throwing armies at the AI would solve the issue, unfortunately. It seems there is almost a switch that makes it so they go dormant at some point, even with armies.

Probably correct, but at the very least it would make attacking their core regions have one good field battle in it. As of right now, I conquered the entire Seleucid empire as Athens without fighting a single non garrison field battle. Would have been nice if there was a full stack sitting outside Antioch at least!

Dresden, do you think that if you lowered the gold subsidy scripts the AI would work better? Do they perform more when they have less cash on hand?

[Dresden]

I literally think when an AI empire reaches a certain size there is some sort of hardcoded switch to turn them off so they don't end up owning the world. I know it sounds weird, but from my experience anytime an AI faction gets past a certain level of provinces they basically shut down.

Whether that is from the amount of cash/resources they have (meaning they don't see a need to expand) or if its from some internal coding I am not sure. The problem has been there since release. When I worked on Spartacus Rises, we had the exact same issue with Rome in that mod. We have tried less bonuses, etc. but there is another problem there in that the AI will simply starve or not produce properly from lack of resources.

It also doesn't make much sense that the AI doesn't defend properly when they are that large. That is what makes me think its some sort of internal thing to the game itself. Its basically like they go dormant.

[Summary]

Could it possibly even have to do with the maluses of imperium. I mean there is a sweet spot to faction size that allows you to keep enough of an army to put up a sizeable defense while deterring others from declaring war on you, while not having to bite the imperium level bullet. Even for the human player expanding beyond a certain point has no real benefit other than colouring the map. All you get is more problems with a larger empire. Perhaps the AI realizes this and chooses the sweet spot.

[valerius karamanus]

Can anyone report how Roman AI performs in Hannibal at the Gates campaign? Asking this because Rome has a uniquely aggressive task generator profile in database made for that campaign map. Rome starts a major with lots of regions as well. Maybe we can tweak some values there.

[Dresden]

I thought I would give an update on this issue. I have been investigating Carthage's defense script and its currently bugged in the mod. I will be fixing it for the beta and that should help a bit.

[Dumanthis]

Are multiplayer versus campaigns affected by scripted stacks? They can really upset people if they pop out in the right moment and the other side don't have one of their own

[Dresden]

Scripted stacks only affect AI factions.